Stone Soup for Five: Entitlement Project--Week 1

Entitlement Project--Week 1

I just finished an amazing book by Kay Wyma called 

Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement




And if you know me, I'm a jump in with BOTH FEET immediately, and think about the logistics of it later kind of person.  But, I had seen a lot of entitlement issues in our home for years and was at a loss for real hands on kind of things I could do about it other than the usual lectures about kids starving and other people with NOTHING... and blah blah blah.

SO I bought Kay's book on Amazon, got it on a Friday afternoon and finished it by Sunday night.  Mr. Measure and I discussed alnog the way and we all sat down and had a family discussion about the 

Video Game Problem.

If you have more than one child, and only one video game system... and they have sharing issues, honesty issues, timer issues... well, it gets ugly. There's a whole lot of bringing complaints to me, and how unfair all of this is, and "Can I just finish this mission? I'm playing LIVE!"  

Ugh. 

It gives me a headache just typing that!

Plus, if everyone has a turn, and brothers are watching or playing with, it can add up to HOURS AND HOURS a day, even though each has just one and a half hours a day, it grows to be about 19 hours by the end of the day.  If you add in hassle time, it's about 27 hours a day.

Ugh.


UGH!


So...

 project 1, month 1.

VIDEO GAME DETOX

There is SO. MUCH. entitlement in the video games around here. Everyone thinks it's a right.  Their whole world revolves around when they can play, what they can play, who they can play with (and who made them mad and can totally NOT play with them, EVER!), and lots of time micro managing for brothers, and just UGLY UGLY UGLY.

So that's where we started.

We sat down as a family.  Told them what we were seeing in them and dealing with and what we were going to do about it.

There was attitude.

Dislike.

Maybe a few almost tears on edges of eyes.



But not as bad as I thought it would be.

*whew*

But, we'll see how this week/month progresses.  
I don't think they know there's a world outside that they can interact with during the daylight and after homeschool hours.

It'll be interesting to see what they choose to do.

So far no one has told me they're bored... but I'm really good at handing out the chores when they do that.  It's funny to see them hang around me, just kind of looking around, but not saying "the words".

We'll see...
Anyone brave enough to join me?

P.S.  We did tell the son who paid for a subscription to xBox live that we will reimburse him for this lost month.

AND, we did tell them that if we saw good attitudes and kindness and creativity during this time, we will be carefully re-introducing it on a very limited basis next month.  Probably.

Oh, and we MIGHT let them play ONLY if Mr. Measure and I are out on a date, because, in all honesty, when they are old enough and big enough to cause serious damage and dismemberment to others in the home that tick them off.. it's a pretty good babysitter.  (They're pretty sure we need to go out tonight.)


1 comment:

  1. Go, Denker's go! May your young men rise to the challenge, learning a life-long lesson in the process.

    ReplyDelete

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